UofG Centre for Public Policy

21 May 2026: With the First Minister and his cabinet now in post, the biggest question left for this minority administration is “how will it govern?” Read a series of thematic briefing papers on where each party stands on key issues, to get a sense of where they align, and where we might see cross-party collaboration.

Introduction from Professor Kezia Dugdale, Centre for Public Policy Associate Director

With 58 Scottish Parliamentary seats, the SNP are 7 seats short of a functioning majority and will therefore need to work across party lines to pass legislation. This is not a new challenge to the SNP. It has spent 14 of it’s 19 years in office as a minority administration, with the 2011 to 2016 Parliament being the exception to the rule.

Whilst the SNP are slightly down in number, they remain by far and away the largest party in Parliament, with more than 40 seats ahead of both Reform UK and Scottish Labour.

What’s perhaps more interesting in this parliament is the changing range in size of opposition parties. In the last Parliament the Scottish Conservatives were the largest party with 31 seats. The smallest party was the Scottish Liberal Democrat’s with 4. Too few to earn a seat on the Parliament bureau, the influential body which determines the business of Parliament on a day to day business. Now the range of opposition parties runs from a much tighter 17 to 10 MSPs. With more even numbers, we are likely to see far more competition to both influence and oppose.

On our UofG Spotlight podcast, former Special Adviser to the First Minister John Swinney Kate Higgins argued that the Government needed Ministers who could “parley.” So who will they parley with and what issues?

In our desire to be useful, the Centre for Public Policy has produced a series of thematic briefing papers on where each party stands on key issues:

Briefing paper series: Manifestos in the Scottish election

Looking for key takeaways?

Visit our Outputs page to view the papers along with key takeaways from the Centre team's analysis

First published: 21 May 2026

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Briefing papers: Scottish manifestos analysis in key policy areas